GECOM starts preparatory works for Local Government Elections

The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) is looking for temporary staff in preparation for Local Government Elections (LGE), which are constitutionally due later this year.
GECOM published an advertisement in search for Temporary Trainers for the 2026 Local Government Elections.
When contacted on Wednesday, Public Relations Officer at GECOM, Yoland Ward, told the Guyana Times that the Local Government Elections are constitutionally due this year and so the Commission is being proactive by starting preparatory works.
“We are cognisant that elections are constitutionally due this year and so in preparation for whenever those elections are called, the advertisement is just a pre-emptive move in relation to how we kick-start our operations,” Ward noted.
The Minister of Local Government is responsible for setting a date for the local government polls. Efforts to contact Local Government and Regional Development Minister Priya Manickchand on Wednesday to ascertain whether a date is being looked at or has been identified, were futile.
Local Government Elections were last held in June 2023.
At those polls, the governing People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) had scored a landslide victory, sweeping 66 of the 80 Local Authority Areas (LAAs) across the country. The then main Opposition, A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) had only managed to win 14 LAAs.
This year’s local government election is likely to come less than a year after General and Regional Elections were held in Guyana on September 1, 2025 and saw the PPP/C returning to office after securing a 36-seat win the National Assembly with over 242,000 votes.
Meanwhile, the APNU was ousted as the main parliamentary opposition by the new kid block party, We Invest in Nationhood (WIN) which gained 16 seats. APNU managed to only secure 12 seats, while Forward Guyana Movement (FGM) gained the other remaining parliamentary seat.
On the other hand, APNU’s former coalition partner, the Alliance For Change (AFC), was completely booted from the National Assembly.
The 2025 elections victory for the PPP/C was even more historic given that the party won, for the first time, Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica), picking up 87,538 votes, while APNU got 46,949.
Region Four has historically been a district won by the APNU coalition’s largest partner – the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR). However, in the 2025 declaration for the District, the APNU declined by almost 70,000 votes when compared to the 116,941 votes that the party received in the General Elections in 2020, when it coalesced with the AFC.
APNU’s lost votes were picked up by the newcomer WIN party headed by US-indicted businessman Azruddin Mohammed. In Region 4, WIN received 41,607 in the general elections and 41,930 in the regional.
The AFC on the other hand struggled to garner impactful results in Region Four, or in any district across the country, only managing to secure 1,761 votes, while FGM earned 2,437 votes in the district.